best options for travel

Best options for travel

We're going to be visiting family in Japan
Mar 14 - arr Narita
Mar 15 - Narita to Kobe
Mar 15 - Mar 23 Kansai region - Kobe, Nara, Osaka, Hirakata, Kyoto
Mar 24 - Kyoto to Tokyo
Mar 29 dep Tokyo
Is the 14 day pass our best buy, or should we look at other options? Since we'll be in Japan longer than 14 days, how should we handle transportation to and from the airport?
Thank you!

Keiseee

almost 3 years ago

2658 views

2 posts

Hi there!

This is a tricky one. If you did the above travel with a 7 day JR Pass it would be a home run! However with the 14 day JR Pass it would depend on what you'd use it for, right now I think that it would be better to just buy single tickets as you travel. The most expansive part is Narita Airport - Kobe, coming down to about ¥ 15,000 and Kyoto - Tokyo ¥ 13,420. Travel around Kansai itself it not very pricey, for instance Kyoto - Osaka is 540 yen and Kyoto - Nara 690 yen. The 14 day JR Pass is ¥ 45,100, so you'd probably need to add something to your itinerary to make it worth it. You could for instance add a visit to Hiroshima and Miyajima and make a day trip to two from Tokyo to places such as Nikko or Yokohama.

As for transportation to the Airport, I would recommend buying normal tickets as you travel. You could look at a Suica + N'EX package for your arrival and use the Suica card to pay for your return ticket as well.

We were planning day trips to Hiroshima, Nara and Mt. Fuji for sure but are trying to stay flexible in our plans. However, it sounds like we need to get more specific with our itinerary to determine how many day trips we'll be taking and to where in order to compare the cost of the 14 day pass with single tickets. Thank you very much!